Part two- Oil pressing

My brother in law Kyle and I have been putting together a vegetable oil pressing and filtering system for some time and have had it somewhat in operation for a couple of months now. We did the first experimenting in the barn at my Dad’s place with one small oil press powered by a 12 horsepower diesel engine, both crudely nailed down to a bench, the seed being fed to the press with buckets and the oil dripping down into another bucket. Altogether it was a very crude and dirty contraption but we both learned a great deal about the whole process and found out plenty of glitches that we were able to work out when we built the second system in a building at Kyle’s house; this system is much more refined, compared to the first anyway! We have two presses, powered by electric motors, both of which run their oil into a pipe that runs into a first settling tank which, once settled for a time is allowed to run into a second set of settling tanks and from there is pumped through a 1 micron filter and into containers for storage. We still pour the seed into the machines with buckets but that is only because we haven’t finished the hopper system which will be self feeding. There is a grain bin for the seed meal on one side and several other bins for storing various seeds before they are crushed. Once the hopper is built and the augers are in place the system will be relatively self contained and one of us can start it up and once it is warmed up and running smoothly it can be left alone to run all day without attention. Kyle is more involved in pressing canola oil, which is then used as fuel in diesel equipment. So far we have one farmer using it in his tractors, Kyle uses it in his Dodge diesel pickup and I use it in all of my diesel equipment except for the Caterpillar which uses the much cheaper used engine oil, as well as my diesel Mercedes and diesel truck. For those of you who are wondering, yes, it works just fine, so far we have had no trouble at all, though heating the oil to 180 degrees is really important if you are not blending it or running it in a Mercedes. For some reason a Mercedes will run on just about anything without trouble, I’ve even heard of a guy running his on melted butter! I am more involved in the flax oil end of things, which is a different process since that is not used for fuel. Right now it is being tested along with the flax meal to see if it will pass the regulations and if it does I’ll be pressing a lot of it for feeding to cattle, particularly a certified organic herd. There are some hurdles yet to handle, for instance the canola is genetically engineered and while that is fine for burning in an engine even a trace of that in with the organic flax oil will make it useless to the organic cattle guys so I have to scrub the pressing equipment, tanks, filters, pipes, floors and everything else in the vicinity with hot water and soap to get rid of every trace of canola seed, oil and meal! Since that is a time consuming job and the risk of contamination is still very high I have decided to build another oil pressing plant here at my place strictly for certified organic production. Of course I’ll only be able to do that if the testing works out and if I can afford to buy the needed machinery which isn’t real cheap. I would have had a complete system but I had it stored in the barn at Dad’s when it burned so that is just a pile of scrap iron now. Very expensive scrap iron!
I had an interesting experience a week or so ago when I was filtering a small batch of flax oil. It seems that flax oil is much thicker when it is cold than canola oil is, I should have taken that into account but I didn’t and while the pump was pumping away and nothing was coming out the other end I thought I would look and see what was going on right about the time the whole thing exploded in my face! Needless to say I moved really fast to shut the pump off but there was oil everywhere. Now I have a filter system to rebuild but this time I am putting a pressure relief valve in right after the pump!
I really like the oil pressing project because not only do I have all of the excellent oil for kitchen use I will ever want (and far fresher and better than what can be bought in the store) but I can grow the fuel I need for every engine I have except for the chain saw, lawn mower and weed eater, all with the byproducts being excellent high protein animal feed and sludge for things like preserving posts and fuel for all sorts of things, for instance if I want a fast and hot fire in the kitchen woodstove to cook something all I have to do is put a scoop of canola sludge in and I have a red hot stove in about 1 minute. The livestock do very well on the meal, especially the flax meal, though I have and will continue to have far more than I can ever feed them! I guess that is just one more reason to get more livestock! Right now production is slow but as we learn more and as the machinery becomes improved things should speed up a bit.